You probably missed the budding war between humans and machines.
Maybe you failed to notice because you were misusing the word "random" while uploading a Facebook photo album (no accepted definition of randomness includes "the same four people making the kissy face in different places"). You may have been too busy Twittering your last bathroom break - "Okay, poop is coming out now." Thankfully, the pirates just saved your ass.
While the "Terminator" movie franchise has produced four films that define the law of diminishing returns, the core premise that humanity will be destroyed by robotic artificial intelligence is so close to reality that I can almost taste the metallic fingers of death as they forcefully remove my larynx.
Well, almost… and it is pretty much all your fault.
Yes, you. You people who tweet from church. A Lutheran church in Ontario announced this week that they are going to embrace "The Theology of Twitter." According to the article, Pastor Ed Blonski actually said, "Twitter embraces what Christ is all about." Now, this may only be Canada - and everybody knows that Canadians aren't really people - but embracing Twitter with such zealous fervor obviously shows that we humans are so hard up for connections that we will sell our souls to the machines with little to no resistance.
Soon, you may have robot friends on Facebook. Researchers in the United Arab Emirates have created a Facebook page for their robot. This sentient being, first named Sarah but later given the face of an old Muslim dude, recognizes faces and walks around in the UAE. Robots usually fail in their attempts to truly become "friends" with humans because they have nothing in common to talk about, but that's about to end.
The robot will automatically search for your face on Facebook when it meets you for the first time and be able to make real-time convo with you about that pool party where you made six different kissy faces. This old Muslim robot is programmed to be a Facebook stalker. It all seems sort of silly, you may say. "It's just robots on Facebook and Twitter Jesus. What's the big deal?"
Enter the neurobot. As science has moved closer to mapping more of the human genetic code than was ever thought possible, robots have rolled in and taken that a few steps further. The Scripps Research Institute, in an article published last week, outlined how its brain bots have developed episodic and categorical memory never before found in robots. They learn from mazes and plot out places they previously visited, in addition to places they plan on going in the future - a feature the Nobel Prize-winning head scientist points out had only been seen in rats.
Like John Connor, the hero of the "Terminator" series who has been unsuccessfully hunted by robots for what seems like forever, some humans are willing to step up to the robots. The Pirate Party just won a seat in the European Union elections held this week, and they are willing to fight for individuals and the dissemination of technology and information to everyone.
Also, pirates fighting robots is just plain cool.
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears weekly.
